


Aspen

by mahadevi



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Angst, Character Study, I have a LOT of feelings abt Hop, Introspection, Mentioned Male MC, Missing Scene, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:58:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21543766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahadevi/pseuds/mahadevi
Summary: You are young. You are hopeful. You are greedy.And then suddenly, you are left with nothing.Or, Hop following the semi-finals, and then all the moments after.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 121





	Aspen

You don’t even have time to breathe.

One moment, you’re walking onto the pitch with your head held high. Then your team is beat into the ground. Then you’re fighting your way up Rose Tower. Then you’re watching the world end before your eyes, then you’re sprinting through the Slumbering Weald, then you’re face to face with the pokémon of legend and then you’re staring down the apocalypse and then and then and then—

You’re back in your hotel room. The sky is dark. The sun has set. You’re standing in you’re hotel room in clothes soaked in sweat and dirt and tears and you survived the end of days you looked the apocalypse in the eye and you fought, tooth and nail but still you couldn’t beat _him_

That is when the loss hits.

The hero you could never be—

You can never be a hero—

You fall to your knees. You smoulder, from the inside out, into nothing but ash.

————

You don’t leave for days. 

You don’t eat. You don’t sleep. You curl on the bed in a mess of sheets and sorrow and you make your grave right there. This is where you’ll live. This is where you’ll die.

It hurts, it hurts it hurts it _hurts_ but not like a stab or a burn or an ache. It hurts like hollow, like something scooped all the gunk out from between your ribs and left you to deal with the rest. There is no marrow in your bones or fibres in your muscles or weight in your body. You are empty, and you could float, float up and away and be going going gone, but there’s lead in your finger tips and it pulls you down to earth.

Dubwool lets herself out at some point, you don’t know how and you can’t consider caring, but she makes a noise that’s high and hurt and you know that she cares for reasons you can’t fathom. She climbs onto the bed with you and settles against your figure and sighs. She pushes against you, warm and unrelenting and soft and kind. She steadies you, with the utmost care.

There is something frozen under your tongue, behind your eyes, embedded in your bones. They are cold and solid and unmelting. 

You do not thaw.

You don’t know how.

————

You get up, because if you don’t there might be questions. Questions from a microphone, pushed into your brother’s face and you cannot do that to him, not now, not ever. So you drag yourself from the sheets and into the shower and you do your best to scrub the sorrow from your skin. You scrub and scrub and scrub, but it’s too deep in your pores and you cannot care any longer.

You meet him in the lobby. You meet his gaze, barely, but you pull him out the doors before you can linger.

This is how it used to be. Your hand around his wrist, yanking him forwards, laughing and laughing and laughing the whole way. You would look back and smile with your eyes wide open just so you could see his smile, half as wide but just as bright.

You don’t look back. You can’t. You can’t you can’t you can’t.

————

You sit in the stands. You do not shout, you do not scream, you do not cry. There is no one to cheer for, down there. They stand beneath you, but it feels like you’re looking up at something just so impossibly tall.

The battle rages. The crowd roars.

Leon falls. Out in a blaze of glory. Sparks fly to the sky as his Charizard wails and buckles and disappear.

You watch the turn of the century from the stands. You do not stand in the path of the comet. You do not blaze a trail to victory. You are aside, with your hands clenched into fists, and you watch as the two people you love most tear each other to shreds.

A stray spark catches your cheek. And that is all.

————

There is a memory.

A Wooloo that wandered from the flock. A wild Weezing that thought it to be easy prey. And then you, just you. Just younger and dumber and more reckless. Running in screaming and shouting and kicking and punching. No pokémon by your side, no badges under your belt.

But you took a couple hits and got roughed up a fair bit but soon enough, the Weezing ran, and you limped back home. One hand braced against its wool, the other in a sheepish wave towards your horrified family. 

There was no ignition. There was no spark that lit up the world and burned it to the ground. No flare that shot to the sky and sent a signal to the stars that you were a hero from the ashes.

But you stood. Firm, unrelenting, and steady. You planted your feet and lifted your chin and anchored yourself with roots and vines and didn’t move an inch.

Has any victory that you’ve had since then tasted as sweet?

————

You go home.

You give Mom a hug. You give Grandpa a smile. You give Grandma a kiss. You put your pokéballs on your desk, and turn away.

You go back out to the fields. You herd the Wooloo with Grandpa’s Boltund at your side. You work in the garden, digging and planting in the searing sun. You help in the kitchen, dicing and grating and doing whatever Mom needs you to do. You put on your running shoes and go for sprints at dawn.

You leave your pokémon in their balls, all six in a row. 

You take trips down the the grocery store and bike parcels into town. You play soccer with the kids on the street and do favours for neighbours. You patch up a fence. You help a girl with her math homework. You read. You trim the bushes. You start working part time at the Pokémart. You wake up at dawn and run and run and run until your lungs are fit to burst.

You can’t escape. It’s everywhere, the ads on the radio and the signs on the street and the words between the laughter of children as they run and play and smile to the sky. Pokémon and gym battles and challengers and champions. You’re sick of it, it makes your stomach turn and your heart hurt. It hurts, hurts, _hurts_ but every which way you turn it’s there and it’s laughing and you can’t escape it at all.

It’s even in your dreams. You dream of the dirt beneath your feet and the defeat that’s fresh on your tongue and of the roar of the crowd that threatens to swallow you whole. You dream of a back that’s broad and solid and all encompassing and how when it falls it crushes you completely. You dream of hands, soft and caring and familiar, ones you’ve held since childhood, ones you know as well as your own, hands that close around your throat and squeeze tighter and tighter and tighter—

You dream of Zamazenta. His gaze even. Unwavering. He stands across from you as fog fills your lungs and he roars and it’s rattles around your skull asking, challenging, demanding to see a hero but all you can show is _you._

The fog grows thicker. The roar grows louder. Zamazenta lunges forwards, fangs bared, and eats you alive.

You wake at dawn. You pull on your running shoes. You keep your eyes on the floor and you walk out of the house and you run and run and run, hoping that you’ll reach the end of the earth and fall right off.

————

Consider the following:

You are born in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere. You are surrounded by the slow and the smiling. In the midst of a herd that’s happy to graze and laze and never do anything more. You are out in the sticks and the grass wraps around your feet and roots you there and begins to pull you into the dirt.

But you _fight._

You scream and thrash and burn yourself alive. You ignite a wildfire, and you burn your way out. You leave a blaze of glory all the way to the top, and there you erupt. You let the world know. You are free. You are strong. You are _here._

God, wouldn’t it be nice.

But that’s not what you are. You are stumbling through cinders with grass still wrapped around your ankles. You are clumsy and stupid and still smiling. You are dying embers, a fading echo. You are the ash that he left behind, buffeted by breeze but still trying to do what he did.

He is the sun, and you are a shadow. 

Stupid of you to think anything otherwise.

————

You go to the Slumbering Weald.

Six pokéballs on your hip. The soft dirt beneath your feet. You walk through the fog and think of beginnings and endings and hopeful smiles that shine like sunshine. You walk, slowly, carefully. Avoid the wild ones in the grass. Look up at the sun that filters between the trees and reach for it.

You open your mouth and _scream._

It echoes, endlessly, into the fog. Maybe, if you scream loud enough, you’ll turn to fog as well.

————

You fight.

Not for glory. Not for honour. Not for a badge or a title or the cheers of a million people lifting you into the sky.

You fight because there are people that are doing wrong. You fight because there is danger that’s threatening to unfold. You fight because there are people you want to protect. You fight because there are Pokémon in pain and their cries grate on your ears and you just want to make it stop.

You win. But for once, you cannot care. You do not relish the final blow that lands just perfect on their form. You do not savour the sight of their crumpling figure as they twist and turn and collapse onto the pitch. You do not revel in their cries that echo through the arena as you beat them with ease.

You watch the pain leave their eyes. The anger leave their frame. The fear leave their heart. And something soft and slow and sweet taps in time with your heartbeat in your fingertips. 

You exhale, and something heavy goes with it.

————

You are terrified. Of the beast that stands in front of you, snarling fangs and yellow eyes and hackles raised. For the people that are behind you, towns and cities and lives that are blissfully unaware of the storm brewing in the forest. By the poison that’s inside of you, viscous and vicious and eating you alive from the inside out. 

You tremble. You cry. You beg and plead and shout. You are pushed around and hit and bruised more than a little.

But you do not move an inch.

There is no cape upon your back. There is no crown upon your head. But there is strength in your stance and firmness in your frame and you are rooted and ready and so you _stand._ Firm, unrelenting, and steady. 

And somehow, it is enough.

————

You never take the title of champion. You try, a few times more. You walk onto the pitch and talk a little smack and get beaten, solid and sound, fair and square. The ground unscorched, the air unsinged. 

You stay in Wedgehurst. You spend hours pouring over the books in the lab. You spend days gathering data in the field with Sonia. You fall asleep at your desk and wake up with a crick in your neck and a blanket over your shoulders. You theorize and hypothesize and revolutionize. 

Eventually, you leave. Step on a ship and sail into tomorrow. You travel all over, near and far, far and wide. Johto and Kanto and Unova and Alola — you see it all, as much as you can. You write notes and take photos and share smiles and laughter with strangers. You search and witness and marvel and wonder.

You come home. You publish books. You conduct research. You fly up to Hammerlocke and blow your budget on clothes. You set up camp in the Wild Area and make the spiciest curry you can think of. You go to concerts with Marnie and scream your voices hoarse. You stand at the front of classrooms and give talks to children with wide eyes and wider smiles. You discover new pokémon. You trade trash talk with Bede over drinks and with grins. You watch the sunrise from your window. You grab a hand that’s as familiar as your own and run through the grass like you’re young and dumb and reckless again.

You don a lab coat and a pair of glasses. You become broad shouldered and tall. You are known not as Champion, but Professor. You smile, ear to ear, bright and broad and as brilliantly as you can.

You do not blaze.

But you bud. And then blossom. And then bloom.

**Author's Note:**

> aspen are a species of tree that grow best after forest fires. bc I am a slut for imagery. 
> 
> hop is a good character that was utilized poorly by the gameplay and plot line, and pokemon still hasnt grasped the best way to tell compelling stories. that is okay. I still love my boy.
> 
> [my twitter ](https://twitter.com/KAMONORITOSHI)


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